1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for generating and rapidly changing the time delays of electrical signals for true time delay beam formation and steering.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of wide aperture, wide bandwidth phase steered array antennas for transmitting and receiving wideband signals is a known technique. Such known antennas suffer from a problem of beam dispersion or broadening when steering away from the array normal.
Attempts have been made to avoid this problem of beam dispersion through the use of time delays between the array elements. One approach for implementing true time delay beam formation is to switch in different lengths of signal transmission delay lines between the common signal source and the antenna array elements. This known approach tends to be bulky and cumbersome for scanning an array with a large number of array elements over a wide range of nearly continuous angles.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system that is simple and that does not require a bulky and complex implementation.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system for implementing true time delay beam formation that may fit into a small lightweight package, that is relatively rugged, and that consumes relatively small amounts of power.